


Cusp of the Trees

by LyrebirdArvo, WhiskeyTick



Series: Pisica Vagaboanda: Davokar AU [1]
Category: Symbaroum (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Alcohol, Casual Audio Hallucinations, Gen, Sexual Language, Swearing, Usual Pict Things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23075227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyrebirdArvo/pseuds/LyrebirdArvo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiskeyTick/pseuds/WhiskeyTick
Summary: Content-light, more a trial run of an establishing shot to see if I want to go with this setting for Pict and co. Liking the taste though, very likely to mess around with it more.In vanilla Symbaroum, there are not cars or phones or such. I'm including them after a fashion because I want to. Fuck it.
Series: Pisica Vagaboanda: Davokar AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1420747
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Cusp of the Trees

##  Jo

Glass from the shattered window crunched under my boots. Broken by a stone, the usual way of some rowdy schoolchild. Or, at least made to look that way, by someone many decades beyond sitting in class desks. The rock was further from the frame than any glass shards, sitting on its own just outside the perimeter. It hadn’t met resistance.

I could picture what he’d probably done. Broke the glass through pressure, started to climb inside, realized that’d be too obvious, grabbed a stone… 

The liquor store’s owner puttered between the shelves, anxiously picking through the pilfered stock like it might magically reappear given enough attention. I stepped around him, marched down the row of shelves, and pushed into the back room.

A faint clink of a bottle drew my attention up to the rafters above. I crossed my arms and waited.

“You don’t see shit.”

“Tick.”

His thin wisp of a voice, always five seconds from bitching about something, was given a bit of a reverb from his perch. “Don’t see shit.”

“Never do. Don’t have to. Could spare a thought to gettin’ a rinse off after you get those holes of yours jackhammered, y’know.”

He didn’t answer, but I could see his narrow hand - missing one finger, so his left - pluck one of the wine bottles from their bobbing weightlessness. The other hand - two fingers missing - crept from cover to give me a rude gesture.

“Mhm, ya keep on with that there.”

“I thought people would eventually stop calling you over when you handed the investigator business off to, whatever her name is. Unless being a brigand stopped being your shit in the past few hours.”

“Essie’s too busy to come traipsing down to every break-in that crops up in Agrella. Especially when they’re caused by someone who’s supposed to be here for visitin’ me.”

“You weren’t answering. I was already in the area. Got bored.”

“Mhm. ‘Nother job, you mean. Figured you must’ve already been ‘n the area, given your car was around when we got docked. What crime you coverin’ your tracks up over with this mess here?”

I had to wait as he audibly gulped down more of the bottle.

_ “Gahh _ \- Tell you tonight. You still on? He’ll try and resell the damn tickets if you’re not.”

“Psh.” I would’ve pretended to cuff him if he was down here. I mimed the action anyways. “Know damn well I am, don’t pretend I wouldn’t be. Now git, some rubbernecker’s probably already called the guards in. I’ll give the old guy some story. Meet ya down the street in a few.”

“You sure?”

“Aye. Goan, then we’ll find your posh hubby.”

He snorted, rose into view, and took a hop towards a beam closer to the high-set window. The bottles clinked as they trailed through the air after him, bound by the lingering effect of one of his spell-tricks.

“See you in a minute, then, Jo.”

“Aye.”

* * *

##  Jo

The theater house was dim, lit only by the lights on the stage and the small lamps in some of the overhanging box booths.

We sat in one such booth, hogging it all to ourselves, even though there were two tables and twice as many seats as the three of us needed. I used one as a foot prop, while Pict ignored the chairs in favor of parking his ass on a lap, his arms crossed and propped on the table between us.

Sliske was the only one really watching the show below. He always cut an odd sight against Pict, true form or not. As a changeling, he was tall, and grey-skinned, and luminous eyed, and horned, and fancy as all hells. In a human face, like he wore now, he kept the elegance and some of the height; tonight he gave it longer hair, closer to Pict’s than his usual slicked-back silver, brown skin, and a tight-pressed suit.

The suit especially clashed with Pict’s coat, which I suspected hadn’t been washed since it was still the beaten up carpet he’d made it out of.

“So, c’mon. Out with it, what was the job.”

With an alcohol-tinted exhale he bent down to the floor, shifting on Sliske’s lap - who unsubtly shifted in turn - and came back up with his briefcase in hand. He set it down and undid the claps, lifted the lid, and passed over a parchment-wrapped parcel.

I plucked the string off - Pict couldn’t tie a knot to save his damn life - and unfolded the paper.

“A hand mirror?”

“Don’t touch the reflective shit. It’ll numb the spot out.”

“... Did you-”

He wiggled his three-fingered hand. I pressed my lips down over a laugh and tried to shoot him a stern look.

“But you didn’t.”

“I-”

“He has not,” drolled Sliske, who didn’t take his eyes off the stage. “But if neither of you talk more quietly, and let me have this show I paid for, _ I  _ am going to use it on him.  _ Liberally.” _

Pict’s expression flickered, his elliptical cat’s eye blowing wide, and I got the sense his voice had gone a bit louder than it was a few seconds ago.

“The buyer’s most likely up to shit with it, anyways.”

“Aye.”  _ Call ya Tick for that reason right there. _ “Can think of plenty ‘a ways someone could off someone else easier by numbin’ the spot first.”

“Mhm. Poison syringe. Few hacks of a dagger if they know they’ll mess up the first, or the blade they have’s dull and made of shit.”

“Snake bite.”

“Fanged spiders.”

“Speakin’ of.” I paused, weighing how to broach the topic, and went for the usual blunt. He responded best to it. “It’s out of Davokar, aye? That old make.”

His pupil had been slowly dilating back to normal, but the mention slammed it down to a slit. “It is. Had to nick it off some fucker. One of those license bitches, found him practically beside himself giddy in one of those high-end bullshit restaurants.”

“Hubby there takes you to those restaurants, doesn’t he? Hells, look where we’re sitting.”

“Not on  _ porc _ money,” Pict muttered with a distinct curl.

Sliske snorted into his water glass, and I caught a glimpse of one of his fingers twisting into Pict’s tied-back hair.

“Nothin’ if not consistent with that hate of bureaucracy, Tick.”

“Drink to that.”

We clinked cups; in the context of the license, his missing fingers were a more somber sight. A knock at the door to the booth shook my thoughts off it.

“Come!” Sliske permitted.

A serving trolly heavy with orders was wheeled to the edge of the table, where our portion of its contents were unloaded - a steak platter, soups, biscuits, plates of steamed vegetables - and then the serving staff withdrew. We all waited for the click of the knob before moving.

Pict reached for a biscuit, and both Sliske and I shoved plates in his way.

“Get somethin’ substantial, first, skinny-ass bastard.”

“What she’s just said. But without the crude language.”

“Don’t act like I haven’t heard you goin’ just as badly as him when I made the damn mistake to lend you two my guest room.”

He tried to shrug with some kind of innocence while redirecting Pict’s hand to the vegetables, which he didn’t take kindly to.

“You’re both motherfuckers.”

“And you’re both going to see us removed from the establishment if you keep up like that, pet.”

Pict wriggled free of the arm loop Sliske had hooked him in, and leaned back on the table, joining my raised-eyebrow look.

Sliske smiled, raising his current face’s own and lifting a hand in smug, mock surrender. “Fine! Gang up on me. Pet might even have a chance like that.”

* * *

##  Pict

I watched the window as I sat beneath the rental room’s blankets. I couldn’t see the Davokar from here - too far, hours away, even by car - but I had the suspicion that it was in that direction.

Static crackled in my ears, joined by the mutters of something slumbering in an omnipresent nowhere, and something dripping, decaying, old, beneath the floorboards.

I could also hear the shower running in the room’s attached washroom, and Sliske muttering to himself as he cleaned up. The thought to join him crossed my mind, and while it wasn’t a bad one or one either of us would oppose, I didn’t want to move. He’d already made me wash up, and I’d just be doing it again after this, which meant it being practical was also out.

So I’d wait. I picked a bottle from below the night stand and sucked a bit of it down, just enough to maintain the good buzz, then went back to watching the night pedestrians.

Until the faucet cut off.

I heard steps on a mat. A towel scrubbing.

Steps passing through the door, back into the room.

My neck prickled as my briefcase snapped open.

Paper unwrapped. The excited prickling crept elsewhere.

Ticks of his snarp nails on metal.

A pause.

“... It is sort of  _ immediate, _ isn’t it?”

The shock of my unexpected wheeze jabbed pain into my chest, but I couldn’t feel it over the disappointed sheepishness in his voice.

“You  _ dumbass.” _


End file.
